SSD's fail just like Spinners so I do an Image Daily on my C: drive , it takes about 5 minutes and since I do not use restore points I find it a necessity. I also image my D: drive which contains all of my Steam games but not that often.
Last edited by Josey Wales; 09 Sep 2017 at 10:37.
One thing I'm looking forward to in the next version of Windows for HEDT is the support for large amounts of NVRAM memory.
I hope my next computer will have enough memory surplus that I can create a RAMDisk and load Windows and important things there from a storage device.
So everything will be available at PCI memory speeds.
Backups would then be equivalent to memory dumps.
"...create a RAMDisk and load Windows ..." I hoping you can tell us how you did it, when that time comes :)
As far as I can tell, you use GRUB to create a ramdisk, and use it to boot a virtual hardrive. Not a simple exercise but obviously has been done looking on web. However, to do this on NVRAM would cost an insane amount of cash. People skirmished with NVRAM a few years back, but SSDs have advanced enough to give most of the benefit anyway.
It doesn't have to be NVRAM, I'd be willing to re-load memory on each restart. I just want the support to run from memory that that edition may supply.
It would be expensive, but some people buy yachts, gamble, etc. You gotta have a hobby.
The main issue is motherboard support for something near a Terabyte of memory on 8 or 16 channels - that might be years away.
No matter the SSD speed there is still a copy from disk to memory. I don't know, but I'm hoping that support will avoid the copy.
"..."...create a RAMDisk and load Windows ..." I meant: after you do that successfully, tell me how that was done, I'm interested in learning!
My first Dell 486DX (with a 240MB HD @ $1/MG) I think was $2500+-; my first Pentium III MMX was $2K+- if memory serves me. Software ranged from DOS 3.33 to DOS 6.22, Windows 3.1 thru WFW 3.11; was forced to jump to Windows 95, later onto to 98/98SE; I had to make the jump to Windows 7 -- where I am today; I refuse to go to Windows 10.
We used to be able to use Config.sys to make a VDisk and assign it a drive letter.
You do the current equivalent.
Then you start to install Windows on that drive letter.
Then install your programs.
When done you use an imaging program to backup that drive.
On a restart you restore that drive.
That is a clumsy way, I hope the new Fall Update Pro version has this more streamlined. That way will still need a memory copy from the drive to main memory. I'm hoping the new code will avoid that.
With an NVRAM, you would not need to restore. If a motherboard had support for backup power on the memory modules one could avoid a memory wipe.
I don't know what will be in that new fall update, but the promised non-volatile memory support seems to be a big deal in that new version.
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